i did really feel a real strength. did it also really sink in at that moment? everything just so much always seems surreal to us. you know, how could this be happening? whitney s father, newell, was having the same feelings as he flew back from mississippi. it was surreal. it seemed the world was going on and it should just stop because of the pain i was feeling. his wife and remaining daughter met him at the airport. it was very, very emotional. i came down the escalator, and there they were. no words were spoken. we just ran into each other s arms and started crying. did you pray together? oh, yeah, yeah we did. i don t remember praying. i remember holding onto newell and holding onto carly and just really feeling that security of just being together. i just needed to be together with them. they went back to whitney s dorm, picked up her belongings and started the long drive back home. on the way, they wrote whitney s obituary. whitney erin cerak, age 18 of
it was hard? hard for you to think that everything was going to be okay? it was hard, yeah. i m not a hospital person. the machines every beep, every nonbeep, everything that stopped scared me, everything that started, you know, was unsettling. i didn t know what everything was for. and, yeah, i was fearful. i was shaky today, laurie, wanting so badly for you to wake up. it s not like you to be so still. wake up, sweetie. i want to talk to you and see your beautiful face and look into your eyes. i love you. mom. the family took turns keeping a 24-hour vigil by laura s bedside. whitney s family was keeping a different kind of vigil. on saturday, the 29th of april, a day before the funeral, you held a visitation. and, boy, a lot of people came.
she left me a message, i believe, on their trip up to fort wayne. i didn t call her back. at about 8:00 p.m., their work done, laura and whitney, along with seven other students and staff members were riding in a school van heading south on interstate 69 toward the main campus. whitney s sister carly, also a student at taylor, was the first to hear that something was wrong. my friend ben drove up and told me that there was an accident and he thought that whitney was in it. so i called her cell phone and there was no answer. i started to kind of worry. i called her cell phone again and again. now i just started noticing people just kind of running around everywhere and coming up to me and talking to me and asking me if i had talked to whitney. did they talk about the severity of the accident at that time to you? i was hearing that people had died in the accident but not everyone had died. carly and whitney s mom was home in gaylord, a five-hour
strength, when i am so weak. only he could uphold me as he has. while laura s family prepared for a long struggle to save their daughter, whitney s family couldn t yet bring themselves to say good-bye. on april 27th, the day after the crash, taylor university held a prayer service for the victims. whitney s mom colleen attended. they had the big projector screen, and they would flash the names of the different victims that had died. and then everybody in there was praying for that person on the screen. sorry i keep crying. i just remember the first time that they put whitney s name up there. i thought that i would really cry hard, but i felt just such at peace that every single person in there was praying for our family at that point.
and i just started crying like a baby. i just felt at a loss because i was so far from my wife and from carly, but it was it was devastating. whitney s father, newell, was on a church trip in mississippi, 1,000 miles away. now, someone had to tell their other daughter, carly, what had happened. the family pastor offered to make the call. he knew i was so heartbroken at that point it was hard for me to even talk to carly. as soon as i heard him i knew that it must mean that whitney wasn t alive. i remember just dropping the phone and just falling right there on the spot and crying. carly had rushed to marion, indiana, general hospital in hopes of finding out her sister was alive. now she was told whitney had been dead for hours. her body, just a few feet away. carly couldn t bear to look. i was too emotional to have